Certain styles of knitted shirts, blouses and other garments are formed with plackets having buttons and buttonholes at the front neck opening to facilitate donning and removal of the garment from the body and to form an attractive collar and placket design. In order to create a desirable and stylish garment, the placket must be perfectly formed with its buttonholes properly spaced and aligned with the length of the placket, preferably in alignment with the ribs in the knit of the placket. Some plackets are curved along their lengths, and the ribs in the knit formation are also slightly curved along the length of the placket, and it is desirable to form the buttonholes with their lengths extending approximately normal to the length of the placket and parallel to the ribs of the knit.
While it is desirable to have plackets virtually perfectly formed so as to create an attractive garment design, the relatively small plackets are difficult for a sewing machine operator to align in the sewing machine so as to form the buttonholes approximately normal to the length of the placket, and it is difficult for the sewing machine operator to space the buttonholes equally along the length of the placket. Moreover, the most experienced sewing machine operators are subject to the usual problems caused by fatigue and frequently make errors in performing the required sewing functions to form the buttonholes in a placket. As a result, plackets are frequently improperly formed, resulting is an improperly formed garment which must be sold as a "second"or discarded.
While some attempts have been made to develop an automatic system for sewing buttonholes in shirt plackets, the attempts have been largely unsuccessful, mainly because of the difficulty in handling the highly flexible knitted placket and properly positioning the placket with respect to the buttonhole sewing machine, turning the placket in the sewing machine, and subsequently cutting the placket in half at the proper line of separation.